SRAM Recalls Zipp 88 Bicycle Wheel Hubs Due to Crash and Injury Hazards Everything you need to know can be found here. 1 of 2 photos First version of 88 hub Download Share Recall Summary Name of product:Zipp 88 aluminum hubs for bicycle wheels Hazard: The hub flange ring on the front hub can fail posing a crash and injury hazard. Remedy: View Details Replace Consumer Contact: SRAM at (800) 346-2928 between 9 a.m. and 8 p.m. ET Monday through Thursday and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET on Friday, or visit www.sram.com or www.zipp.comand click on Recall Notice for more information. [...]

So you say you’re going on a road trip to a chilly destination. Maybe it’s to your parents’ or the in-laws’ for the holidays, and maybe you’re going to squeeze in an event like the Iceman Cometh. Late fall and early winter can be a volatile time weatherwise. Unless you’re headed to somewhere like southern Florida or Los Angeles, you can’t be too certain of what weather to expect. Heck, when traveling with the family or to see family, you can’t even be too certain of what time of day you’ll be able to go for a ride. Sneaking out [...]

Backcountry.com’s online community encompasses a passionate group of wanderers, adventurers, Gearheads, and athletes. Get the rundown on the raddest happenings within the community in You Are Backcountry, your connection to the best product reviews, photos, and videos submitted and uploaded by our athletes, our employees … and you! Here at Backcountry we are pretty darn excited about the launch of the GoPro Hero4 and to celebrate we curated a collection of our best community-submitted GoPro shots and videos! Let ‘er rip! Backcountry.com community high flyer Denis, from Russia, captured this shot while piloting a hang glider with the Hero 3 Silver [...]

In British Columbia, Canada, tucked alongside the Columbia River, you’ll find the tiny town of Revelstoke nestled under a multitude of lofty glaciated peaks. Yearning for an escape from Utah’s summer inferno, I stuffed my Subaru with my mountain bike, paddleboard, and backpacking gear to see what this famed ski town had to offer. Photos by Bruno Long Surrounded by National Parks, Revelstoke boasts a rich heritage in forestry, the railway industry and ski jumping. My adventure began with a mountain bike ride on the high alpine singletrack of Frisby Ridge. I marveled at stunning panoramic views of glaciers clinging [...]

Pedaling away from home after work ride, I bust through a quick mental checklist. Helmet, shoes, gloves: on. Water, tools, snacks: yes. GoPro: check. Bear spray: affirmative. Wait, what? GoPro? Why bother carrying that around on a quick evening ride? Why, simply to share and relive the awesome moments! From my own fun and frequent outings last summer, I present a montage from some of the trails around Jackson Hole. Let it prompt you to enjoy your own adventures, and make the trip to Jackson and ride these trails yourself! To help facilitate your explorations, I’d like to present a [...]

TJ and I have been on the road for three weeks with our dog, Maja. We’ve got two weekends left in our big five-race road trip and Maja is about to become an international traveler as we’re bringing her along to Canada for the World Cup in Mt. Sainte-Anne. It was a very long three stretch with some hiccups along the way, but two National Championship medals, multiple podiums and a couple of wins is a great few weeks of racing for the team. WORS Cup Pro XCT Our five-week stint of racing started in Portage, Wisconsin at the WORS [...]

If you’re searching the Internet for training advice, you’ll find more than just a few words of wisdom about how to get faster. The consensus: to get faster you have to go harder. Because even though LSD (long slow distance) definitely has its place—especially when it comes to ultra events—it won’t make you faster, you’ll just suffer less. But how do you know how hard to go? That is where heart rate training comes in. What is a Heart Rate Zone? Your heart rate is an objective indicator of how hard your workout is. Whether you are training for that [...]

Heading up to Missoula from Utah for the next race on the Pro Mountain Bike Cross-Country Tour , we were equal parts nervous and excited to see first-hand what the buzz was all about at the Marshall Mountain course. There was the famous “A-Line” jump, the rowdy crowds, and the summer solstice buzz and requisite parties that Missoula is known for. After an almost seven-week break since our last major domestic cross-country event, we all wondered who would be on top of their game. The last time the top North American women had lined up together was for the Whiskey [...]

For the competitive cyclist, the transition from early season to summer requires some thought. Throughout the winter and spring, you’ve focused on developing the aerobic system and sustainable power you need for the summer race schedule. A lot of miles went into this pursuit of base fitness and if you did it right, it felt like work at some point along the way. But while long hours on the bike can improve overall fitness, come summer you’ll want to make some changes by adding some more intensity, balanced by more fun, into the mix. Go Harder After months of logging [...]

Real talk, it’s not a matter of if you’ll get a flat but when. In fact, the difference between a 10-minute fix and walking your bike home hinges on whether you’re prepared for the inevitable. That’s why I made a step-by-step tutorial for fixing a flat that’ll save your ride someday. Step 1: Removing the Wheel Before you start looking for the culprit, you’ll need to remove the wheel from either the frame or fork. Depending on your bike, you’ll either have to loosen the quick-release and drop the wheel or remove the thru-axle and drop the wheel. We suggest [...]

Maybe it takes living in a mountain biking town to see the stratification so clearly, but no matter where you live it’s practically guaranteed there are some mountain bikers we like to call “dirtbags.” If there are trails, all you have to do is look and know what you’re looking for. You might be one yourself and not even know it. What? Dirtbagging isn’t about money. You can be broke as a joke or riding around on $10,000 worth of carbon fiber. We know lots of guys and gals who drop serious coin on equipment and thrash the hell out [...]

As national bike-to-work month wrapped up, we checked in with some of our employees who have been logging miles in the Backcountry.com bike commuting contest in May to find out what and where they’re riding, and what they’re carrying. Patagonia kicked in some sweet prizes, both footwear and apparel, as an extra motivator for employees to get out of their cars and onto their bikes. Chris Mackay The Commute My ride to work is about 11.2 miles round trip with 80 meters of steep climbing on the way home. The route I take is very safe with mostly frontage roads [...]

The bike schedule for the next few days was looking quiet, without any racing or training scheduled, and a heap of bad weather was parked over northern Utah. A quick trip to Fruita and Moab was in the cards–time to start packing. The question was, how? Late spring in the desert mountains can be one of the toughest trips to prepare for. It’s just as likely to be sunny and in the low 90s as it is for a storm roll to through with wind, snow, and hail. And between those snow and wind storms, when the calm and sunshine return, [...]

From the Pro’s Perspective -Michael Barry For ages, cyclists assumed that narrower tires were better. Time trial bikes were fitted with 19mm tires, as we thought that they would slice through the air better than a 23mm. The rider cautiously rode to the start line, avoiding any bumps or road grit, for the fear that the tires might be punctured. We’d pump them rock hard, as we thought that harder tires created less rolling resistance. We also thought that narrower and harder tires were more aerodynamic, rolled faster, and were more responsive. Well, they aren’t. In the last five years, [...]

Everyone’s been there: It’s a beautiful summer afternoon, warm with light winds and a few puffy clouds on the horizon, but nothing overhead. You and your friends are enjoying your favorite hike, and as you gain the ridge you see tall, white clouds on the horizon; too far away to matter to you. You head for the summit as the sky turns grey and you think, “It’s mid-summer, we aren’t going to get rain.” When you hit the summit, you feel your hair kind of stand up, and the rocks seem to be buzzing. You finally realize you’re not in [...]

Being adequately prepared and equipped can easily make or break an all-day trail ride. What you bring along in your pack depends on the weather, the trail, and the length of time you plan to be out on the trails. I’ll break down the essentials you should have with you on extended (4-6 hour) rides. Gear Spare Tubes or a Patch Kit Even if you’ve gone tubeless, I usually have at least one tube and patch kit in my pack on a long ride. It’s a little quicker and easier to replace a tube than patching a tube on the trail. If [...]

There’s epic, and then there’s Epic. In my ten years of racing downhill, I’ve seen the term overused to the point of meaninglessness; however, I can comfortably say that the 2014 Whiskey 50 mountain bike race presented by Epic Rides in Prescott, AZ was, as promised, Epic in every way. And I feel no shame admitting that, for me, it was in the not-so-good sense of the word (aka Type II Fun). For me the ordeal, uh, experience started two weeks before the start with a casual, “Hey, want to go race 50 miles?” Our “civilian” entry in the amateur [...]

Everyone has their favorite ride. Start in town, head through the neighborhood, cut through the back roads to the trail head, climb, climb, climb, and climb some more before taking the single track downhill from the overlook’s edge back into town. Wrap up the ride with huge grins, high fives, some KNUCKS! and stop off for a brew or a bite to eat … sometimes before you even change clothes and clean up. That, in a nutshell, is Epic Ride’s Whiskey Off-Road, a 50 mile event in Northern Arizona. Starting from Whiskey Row in downtown Prescott, the event takes over [...]

Unless you’ve been living under a steel clunker since 1991, you’ll know that the Sea Otter Classic is one of the best-known cycling festivals in the world. To overuse an already overused term, it’s a pilgrimage, a can’t-miss event for teams, athletes, sponsors, and anyone looking to make a splash in the cycling world. Equal parts outdoor industry expo and competitive bicycle circus, it’s the rare chance for criterium racers, downhillers, cyclocrossers and cross-country mountain bikers to share a common event. For the Backcountry Bike Team, it was a chance for us to not only prove the results of March [...]

On the docket: a glorious 60 hours in the desert, away from the rain, sleet, and springtime snow that had been pounding the Salt Lake City area all week. Saturday’s Intermountain Cup regional mountain bike race, Cactus Hugger, was merely an excuse–a reason to trek down to Dixie. And camp. On our way down to St George in southern Utah, I read a piece on the Semi-Rad.com blog called the “The Hierarchy of Camping.” According to the Hierarchy, the freshly wrapped Backcountry Bike Team Sprinter Van that Evelyn Dong and I had packed up with all the fixings for a weekend of [...]

Backcountry.com’s online community encompasses a passionate group of wanderers, adventurers, Gearheads, and athletes. Get the rundown on the latest happenings within the Backcountry.com community in You Are Backcountry, your connection to the best product reviews, photos, and videos submitted by our athletes, our employees, and you. A Vibrant Community Nature is host to some of the most gorgeous colors you’ll ever see, whether they’re in the form of double rainbows, smoldering sunsets, or bright purple climbing ropes, and our customers and community members have captured enough of them to make one of those giant photos that’s made up of other, [...]

If the season-opener event in Austin was about fluffy, feel-good racing on singletrack, Bonelli and Fontana were about world-class competition and pushing the pain needle to 11 on the dial, then seeing how you stacked up against the best. Both events are on track to become World Cup events, and as such feature sub-15-minute laps, multiple brutal climbs, and dust so thick it obscures the ground. Limited opportunity to recover or prevent being passed characterized the racing and the track. There’s no faking it on these courses or against the competition, which was gunning for both UCI points and the [...]

The Backcountry Bike Team has been a labor of love; it’s a project that’s been in the works for months, if not years. But finally, we were doing it. The 2014 Mellow Johnny’s Classic in Austin was our first outing, our first ride in the new uniform and on the new bikes, and in the case for some of us on the team, our first ride together as a group. Ever. I could hear the yells of support echoing through the scrub oak and cedar trees, down the rocky washes, and off of rock walls. Surprisingly, it was loud enough [...]

You’d have to live under a rock to be unaware of the wheel size debate that’s currently gripping mountain biking. Since you’re reading this, you probably don’t live under a rock, unless said rock has Wi-Fi. And while we’ve all heard countless arguments favoring each size, what’s certain is that the classic 26-inch wheel size is quickly losing ground, which means that most everyone who’s looking for a new ride is choosing between a 27.5- or 29-inch bike. Your choice will largely depend on your priorities, as each size offers distinct advantages. Let’s dig through them. Bottom Bracket Drop Claims of increased [...]